Unchained Melody
by Stephane Richer
Summary: Lonely rivers sigh, "Wait for me, wait for me. I'll be coming home. Wait for me."


Unchained Melody

Disclaimer: I don't own Tite Kubo's _Bleach_ or Susan Boyle's recording of "Unchained Melody".

* * *

He's deft with his fingers, entrancing to watch as he prepares medicine for her. She's just another sick peasant, but it doesn't seem to matter to him. There's something in his eyes that says she means as much to him as an aristocrat would, that he promises to save her. The world, she thinks, needs more doctors like him.

He stays in the village. He's rumored to be a fourth son, cast off, unnecessary, but given provisions to start his own medical practice. He knows about herbs, bandages, what the best remedy is for each person. He knows that it's all on an individual basis. Yet he's still so aloof. She, the sickest of them all, is perhaps the sickest of them all.

"I'm sorry that I'm so sick," she tells him.

He shakes his head, a smile ghosting across his face, so small she wonders if she's imagining it. "I'm sorry that I cannot make you better."

Everyone is shocked when he proposes to her, but he can keep a closer watch on her in his own home, she knows. Part of him is fascinated with her as a patient.

They have a baby girl, and miraculously she survives. She teaches her daughter to walk and talk while he supports them, takes care of them. She dies when her daughter is almost four, but she feels very fulfilled. She never imagined someone would take on a burden like her.

"I'm sorry I'm leaving," she tells him.

"I'm sorry to see you go," he chokes out, shaking as he clutches her hand. They both know she's not long for this world.

* * *

Years pass in the afterlife. She is lonely, but she finds a few of her cousins, who are surprised it took her so long to get there.

One day, she sees a man, unmistakably the same man, more world-weary and stooped with age, but underneath he's the man she loves. She shouts his name. A smile breaks out on his face.

"You waited?"

"Forever."

This time around, they have more time. They reunite with their daughter, with her parents. They live in a poor district, though, and invasions are frequent.

He dreams of attending the newly-established Shinigami academy, but an arrow pierces his stomach one day. His body dissolves before she can get there, and soon after, she dies of grief.

* * *

She is brought to the fishing village as the new wife of a very old, lecherous man. Her beauty is stifled by his constant leering, by his touch. She is very lonely when he's out; she just stares at the sun on the sea all day.

She would be the quietest one in the village if it weren't for him. He fishes alone, goes out farther each day than anyone else, starts earlier and gets back later. Her husband dies, and she stays staring at the sea all night, at the moonlight, too, pulling back the tide. There are rumors, rumors that she's insane, that she killed her husband.

But she is gentle. He joins her late at night on the shoreline, shares his fish with her. Together, they cook the tuna in silence.

He moves in with her some years after. They never get married. It doesn't matter; no one would go near them anyway. They whisper, but they leave well enough alone.

On the same day that her body is found lying sprawled on the shore, he takes his boat out and never returns.

* * *

He cannot find her this time. Something about the district he lives in is quite familiar, but he cannot place it. It is perhaps from another lifetime. He is recruited by the Shinigami, and trains at their small academy.

She lies, starving in the back room of her ex-husband's grubby little cottage. He will not let go, will never let her leave him again. She does not see anyone else, begins to forget she ever lived in a fishing village. She forgets her own name.

He rises through the ranks of the Gotei 13, eventually becoming captain of the third division. He searches for her far and wide, when he can, but does not find her anywhere. After 200 years, he gives up. He is forgetting her face, her touch, her voice. He must move on. She could have been born and died again, twice, thrice.

She does eventually die, but she doesn't know how long she's been kept prisoner. It doesn't matter. This time, she is set free.

He has lived for hundreds of years; even he has lost count. But he grows old (even Shinigami do), withers away. The name he calls out as he convulses, lies on the threshold of rebirth, is not his current wife's. No one has any idea who it is except for him, but he is already gone.

* * *

She feels that something may be missing, There's a hole in her heart, one that cannot be filled by the many men she takes into her bed. They will come to her, despite her coughing and wheezing, her fevers and seizures. Some of them want to take care of her; some of them get turned on by it; some of them see her as their best option. Still, among them there is no one she truly cares for.

They get jealous (of course they do; they're men) but she watches her back, most of the time. Until one day she doesn't, and she is stabbed to death, her body thrown in a river to decay.

He misses her completely this time. He lives an ordinary life as the son of a merchant, calmly accepting his status. He doesn't feel anything, really, not love or hate. The quick-tempered child grows into an even-tempered merchant, one who's meticulously efficient. He raises his two sons to be just like him, and dies at an old age, not content but not wanting for anything.

* * *

She wanders aimlessly through the Rukongai. Working at a bar is tiresome, so she quits the job she has, the only hope of advancement in the world. Nothing matters, she thinks, looking out on the dirty river, watching the algae float by, choking the fish the way the emptiness here chokes her.

He is born into a wealthy family again, is the eldest son. His temper is quick; he senses something somewhere that connects with him, but loses the connection early and searches angrily. The people in his life are for the most part good people, but none of them really sees inside him.

* * *

She is the eldest child, disappointingly female, though that feeling goes away when her little brother is born five years after her and the pressure is shifted toward him. Two more brothers and finally a baby sister follow. She is engaged to a man of similar status, and is preparing to wed when the fire happens. Her parents and brother and most of the servants are out for the day, but the cook sets an uncontrollable blaze off in the kitchen while she's taking a nap, and she wakes up to the smoke all around her. She hears her little sister crying, finds her, but as soon as she picks her up, she passes out from the smoke.

Their charred bodies are found several days later.

* * *

He begins to sense it again, that something in the air.

Her heart, heavy and afraid before, feels lighter, even after she abandons her sister to the streets.

They meet in the middle. He is not a doctor, an old man, a fisherman, a captain of the third squad, or a merchant. She is not a peasant, a woman who depends on relatives to support her, a trophy wife, a prisoner, a prostitute, a bartender, or the eldest of five.

"Hello. I'm Byakuya."

"Hisana."

They share a cautious smile.


End file.
